


The Trials and Tribulations of the Estimable Jane Crocker, Drum Major

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Marching Band, Marching Band AU, gogdamnit why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1811698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won





	The Trials and Tribulations of the Estimable Jane Crocker, Drum Major

Jane Crocker joined the Midtown Skaian Public Academy Marching Band in her freshman year in order to get college credit. She was third-position snare drum, and came out of that first season with a tentative love for marching. The next year, under that principle and the logic that a position of authority would appeal to colleges even more than mere participation, she tried out for and received the position of assistant drum major. The year after, she lost the “assistant” portion of the title and became the center drum major as a mere junior. Despite a number of factors to be discussed later, her lamentable love of marching band convinced her to continue with this into her senior year.

This was, however, all ancient history. (Ancient being a somewhat relative term in the life of a high-schooler.) It was currently August, two weeks into the marching season of Jane Crocker’s senior marching season. As always, August was a stressful time; the freshman were no longer so bad that they weren’t actually marching with the rest of the band, yet not yet good enough that their marching didn’t cause five-trumpet pileups on a daily basis.

Jane rarely had much time to spare during marching band, being senior drum major that she was, but during the summer band mid day rest period (mandated by the school board after the band broke school record for number of exhaustion-related ambulance calls in a day), Jane Crocker found herself with a little bit of spare time on her hands. It was a rare moment of marching serendipity, and as she had learned to do through her marching tenure, she took full advantage of it. Naturally, as she did with almost all spare time, Jane had taken the opportunity to sneak away from the band, hide in the back of the storage room, and settle down for a good twenty minutes of updating The List.

Jane Crocker’s List was infamous, not only throughout her band, but through the entire school and quite a few of the surrounding bands and schools. It was also the reason that a love of marching had only narrowly convinced her to continue in band. Being drum major was never an easy thing. _Jane’s_ job was a bit harder than most. You see, Jane Crocker’s List was not the only infamous thing about her band - far from it. The Midtown Skaian Public Academy Marching Band was famous and infamous throughout the county for a number of reasons; it was known for (occasionally) excellent discipline, bizarre show topics, a magnificent color guard, and an unchecked propensity for violent mayhem. Their drum majors, the noble souls tasked with containing this madness, went on to spend time either in an asylum or in Congress. (Places that were, after all, equally chaotic and given to madness.)

Such were the origins of Jane Crocker’s List, a coping mechanism Jane had developed early in order to prevent herself from homicide. Five days into her junior marching season, Jane had developed from a responsible, diplomatic young lady into a wild-eyed creature that was beleaguered, stressed, and just a little trigger-happy. After it had taken two snare drummers, a sousaphone, and Mr. Droog to peel her hands off the neck of a sophomore who accidentally set fire to his clarinet keypads, she had taken up The List as a method of stress relief. It was nothing more and nothing less than a record of all the woes that Jane Crocker had survived as drum major, all written down in a palm-sized sky blue notebook. It was both impressive and added to on a weekly basis. This and frequent contemplation of the approaching end maintained her sanity within reasonable levels.

Jane had just settled in to add the week’s new entries (only three, this week - a new record; perhaps she really had seen it all) when the storage room door let out the horrible squeal that meant it was opening. She groaned silently, letting her head fall back against the wall she was leaning on, and pushed herself off to see who it was and if she could possibly convince them to go away. Oddly enough, it wasn’t a lone curious freshman, as she’d expected. Instead, she was faced with John Egbert (her two-years younger brother and sophomore trumpet), WQ (the elegant white carapacian color guard leader), and an assorted host of other section leaders and influential members of the band, all of whom were looking straight at her. Jane was struck with a horrible certainty, and narrowly resisted the urge to simultaneously hide and cry.

“...who’s the ambulance for?” she said, massaging her temple. WQ laughed - unfairly, Jane thought, given that the last time she’d been interrupted while updating The List, she’d been asked to help remove a pair of glasses from a clarinet after the owner of the latter had smacked the owner of the former in the face hard enough to tangle the two.

“No one this time, there’s no ambulance,” the Worry Queller said reassuringly. “We have something for you.”

“It’s a present!” Roxy Lalonde, senior sousaphone, hurried to say. “Totally awesome, Janey, you’re gonna love it.”

Jane snorted, but let them lead her out the storage and towards the band room. “If it’s anything like the last present...” she threatened.

Roxy rolled her eyes. “We totally just said no ambulance, Janey-Jane, no worries.”

They took her to the band room, where a good portion of the band - the ones who were her closer friends, at least - were waiting for her. There, John presented her with a small case, no larger than a flute’s. Jane mentally steeled herself, reached out, and opened the case.

And stared.

And stared.

And stared some more. In the back, someone shuffled their feet and coughed.

The silence was beginning to grow awkward, but Jane Crocker found herself beyond caring. With trembling hands, she removed the contents of the case and turned it in her hands. Then, as she often had over the previous years, Jane began to think back over The List.

****  
  


**# 1. Stop fights**

“Hey!”

“Woah!”

“Holy mother of-”

Jane hadn’t known she was strong enough, once properly motivated, to bodily pick up two sophomores by their shirt collars in order to separate them. She supposed it was...nice to know.

Jane Crocker was both fuming, and celebrating anew the fact that she could pick up two of her fellow band members by their shirt collars in order to separate them. She would probably be more satisfied with this if not for the circumstances, under which she was decidedly furious.

“Seriously?” she growled

**# 2. Stop makeouts**

“The practice rooms? Really, guys?”

**# 3. Detangle someone from a fence**  

Jane...Jane was not amused. Maybe a little tired. “How did this happen?” she asked herself faintly, putting a hand to her head.

“Well, uh, actually...” Tavros stammered, looking almost twice as sheepish and silly as he usually did.

“Not,” Jane interrupted, “you. I don’t want to know how this happened. Let’s just...get you out of there.”

“Tavros, I am starting to think you do this on purpose,” Jane growled, yanking his horn out of the metal loop less kindly than she could have.

**# 7. Detangle multiple people from a fence**

“I would already think that,” she continued “except I know _you_ , John, and unfortunately I also know your friend, here, and because you two are involved, I am not going to be blaming poor Tavros for this time.”

John just cackled and attempted to high-five Vriska, which was a little difficult, seeing as both of them were still well and truly stuck in the fence.

“Is it too much to fucking ask? Could we go one damn competition without some other fucking director from some shit-nothing band coming up to me, telling me they loved the show or some shit but also my goddamn tuba section’s playing “Wall of Death” with their snooty-ass piccolo player, I don’t fucking care they had it coming, is it too much to ask for-”

**# 10. Sit through a two hour lecture on “fucking keeping a sense of fucking professionalism in front a’ tha’ other bands, I mean goddamn.”**

“Very sorry, sir. I’ll be sure the band gets the message.”

“-what happened yesterday was completely unprofessional. As one of the top bands in the state, we should know better than this. When you are at a competition, you are representing our school and our band, and you are all mature enough that you should not need lessons on-”

**# 11. Give a three hour lecture on “acting with an attitude of dignity, maturity, and professional behavior when in the presence of other bands, if you would, please.”**

“Oh come on, that asshole piccolo totally had it coming!”

“No.”

“What?!”

“ _No_.”

“Thith ith thuch _bull-thit_.”

“I said no.”

“Geez, Major Crocker, way to harsh on our parade here.”

“Under no circumstances.”

“Oh, come now, Janey! It’ll be a smash hit!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. No.”

“I would ensure that no one would be seriously-”

“No. The fact that I know that your next word is going to be “injured” should say something about this. No. The fact that you have to add the word “seriously” before it should say quite a bit more. No, no, _and also no_.”

“Oh, come on!”

**# 32. Convince the collective saxophone section that it is in their best interests not to play Tackle Capture the Flag using freshman, instruments, and/or the color guard’s new flags, mostly by saying the word “no” a lot**

“Seriously, why not?! It’s not like we’d break them or anything!”

“And which them are you referring to?”

“Any! All! We’ll even leave off the Tackle part, my hand to Jesus, Jane - why not?”

“I...”

**# 33. When asked why the collective saxophone section can not play Capture the Flag, Tackle or otherwise, with any of the aforementioned objects, fail to actually have a ready answer**

“...”

“Hehehe.”

“...the answer is still no.”

“Seriously? Fuck you, Jane. You are no fun.”

**# 41. Get into the habit of routinely raiding the trumpet lockers every three weeks for pot.**

It was a ritual. The third Monday morning of the month, Jane stopped in the same spot. They didn’t even fight it by now, just opened up their lockers and stood there looking bored. Meulin shot Jane a disappointed pout.

“No, I will not ‘let you just keep it,’” Jane said in response to Meulin’s defeated signing, enunciating clearly enough that the near-deaf trumpet player could read her lips. (Meulin rarely had her hearing aids in by this point of the morning.) “If you want to me to stop doing this, stop letting Kurloz store his illegal drugs in your band locker.” Meulin rolled her eyes and waited until Jane had fished out the usual bundle of baggies filled with pot and pocketed it to shut her locker and lock it with a huff. Jane rolled her eyes back, and headed off to flush the damn thing. Really, you would think she’d learn.

“It’s just a myth, a preposterous one at that,” Jane said in the best coaxing voice she could muster at the moment. She’d started to get bad headaches recently, which had an unfortunate tendency to make her vision go a little odd, and she had a whopper at the moment. The terrified but obstinate huddle of freshman quivering in front of her didn’t help.

“But my section leader said-” one of them piped up.

“Likely as a joke,” Jane sighed, “I promise you, it’s not true in the slightest. The color guard”

**# 67. Reassure freshman that the rumor that the color-guard sacrifices a freshman to their dark god every year is not actually true…**

Cronus, one of her old percussionist buddies, poked his head into the practice room in passing. “Oh, hey, talking about tha “blood for the guard god” myth, champ?” he said, raising an eyebrow in a mildly unobjectionable way. (A miracle, for Cronus.) Jane nodded, rubbing at her temples. “Shit, nah, kids, that’s totally inaccurate slander. I used ta date this guard girl, a real sport and smoking hot, and she swore on her eye makeup and glitter that the dark god _specifically_ demands woodwind freshman.”

**…and fail.**

“Yeah, sport, not any freshman’ll do. Apparently brass an’ percussion freshies taste funny or something.” About half the group of freshman relaxed; the other half started shrieking even more loudly. This did not help Jane’s headache. Not one bit.

Jane glared up at the gleam of bright metal she could just barely see.

**# 74. Remove a sousaphone from the roof**

“How did that even get up there?”

Jane frowned down at the person hiding behind the small wall which surrounded the edge of the roof. (On a side note, she _really_ hoped that Porrim was remembering to hold the ladder steady.)

**# 75. Remove a sousaphone player from the roof**

“Oh. _That’s_ how it got up there. But, then...how did you get up here?”

The junior’s face was terrified. “Don’t let him find me!”

“Come down and face me like a troll, you undisciplined, unruly sack of horseshit and failure-”

Jane handed the newly christened (thanks to Roxy) “roof sousa” down to Rufioh and rolled her eyes at the screaming sousaphone leader.

“Karkat, he’s not going to come down if you keep threatening him with gross bodily harm.”

Karkat visibly seethed.“I am not fucking leaving this shitty spot until I get my Mother Grub-forsaken pound of flesh from this asshole.”

Jane paused. Thought about that. Thought about the fact that the directors, the section leaders, and more importantly Jane, weren’t allowed to leave until every other member of the band had left the campus.

**# 76 . Spend six and a half godforsaken hours coaxing an “incandescently furious” sousaphone player away from the building so that you may get the other sousaphone player they chased up onto the roof down from the roof**

“...I don’t suppose you were joking?” she said delicately, very much dreading the answer.

“He only fucking _wishes_ ,” Karkat hissed dramatically.

If Jane didn’t whimper aloud, it was only because she was still out of breath from handing down the tuba.

**# 104. Witness the awe- and horror-inspiring spectacle that is a color guard member having an existential crisis**

Jane sighed deeply. “Eridan, will you please come down from there,” she said calmly, pointing her flashlight up at the top of the instrument lockers.

“Am I just glubbin’ doing something wrong?” Eridan sobbed hysterically. “I mean, there’s gotta be something going wrong, Jane.” He shuffled out slightly and peered at Jane from the top of the lockers. His ridiculous scarf of the day flopped over the edge; Jane resisted the urge to grab it and yank him down. “Come on, Jane, be honest with me now, why can’t I get a glubbin’ date? What am I doing wrong?”

Jane groaned. “Why on earth would you ask me this, Eridan?”

Eridan’s lip quivered in what was probably intended to be an endearing gesture. (Jane found it obnoxious.) “I’m hopeless, Jane, I’m glubbin’ pathetic is what I am. I ain’t got shit, I’m glubbin’ worthless.” And he broke into renewed wailing.

“...Please come down,” Jane said.

**# 107. Deal with Romantic Escapades(TM)**

That, she felt at the time, was enough said.

Jane Crocker stared for a moment. Then she made a very careful sweep of the area, and only once she was satisfied that neither a member of any other band at the competition nor any of their own band directors were nearby, did she turn back to the two MSPA band members she’d found hidden in an alcove behind the refreshment stand. They were two sophomores, and unfortunately, they were ones she knew personally, or at least by proxy: her friend Dirk’s younger brother Dave, the snare drum, and her brother’s friend Vriska’s on-again off-again whatever-they-were, Terezi Pyrope the alto saxophone. The fact that she did know them made the finding of them a little more awkward than it would already have been. That wasn’t easy either, considering the circumstances.

Jane took a very deep breath, and let it out through her nose. Dave winced, and Terezi’s grin went a little more petrified. Jane honestly didn’t care how mortified they were feeling at the moment. Her day had gone from stressful but fine to utterly unpleasant, and she had seen things (was _still_ seeing things, actually) that she could not have wanted to if she’d tried. Jane wanted to leave, go home, and think about her choices in life, but she also knew what she was supposed to do. Even if just the thought of doing it made her feel unclean.

She was going to hate herself forever, just for this.

**# 121. Utter the phrase “If you get jizz stains on any portion of your marching uniform, I will not be held responsible for what I, Kanaya, or the uniform parents do to you.”**

She heard amnesia could be caused by blunt force trauma. She could only hope so.

“How could you?” Karkat howled, just as Jane leaped forward to grab his arms and haul them behind his back in a restraining hold. Gamzee wisely took the opportunity to disappear. Jane huffed as she pulled Karkat back. Luckily, she was more than strong enough that his struggling did very little, but it was still annoying. “Damnit, Jane, _let go_! He broke my fucking heart, I reserve the right to break his fucking legs for this-”

**# 127. Utter the phrase “‘An eye for an eye’ is not applicable to broken hearts and knee caps. Please stop trying to break his kneecaps.”**

“Fuck you,” Karkat snarled viciously, which would have been more convincing if tears weren’t pouring down his face. “He’s been fucking around spades with Terezi, he _knew_ I hated her. And if that wasn’t fucking enough, he’s been cheating on me, too, this whole fucking time-” Jane sighed, ready to start talking him down again, “-with _Cal fucking English_.”

Jane outright gaped.

Karkat screeched, “I know, right?!”

“...so, come here often?” Terezi said in a cheery voice. Jane might have believed her if the saxophone hadn’t been sweating bullets at the moment.

“...why is it always you, somehow?” Jane said flatly. Carefully not looking at where their hands might be, Jane moved forward, scanned the desk, groaned internally when she spotted the files she had been sent to find, and indicated to Terezi that she should scoot over, as the tealblood was sitting squarely on them. Jane retrieved the files, turned, and had almost escaped when her lamentable sense of responsibility stopped her in the doorway. (She really needed to get rid of that thing.) Jane winced, swore quietly, and looked back over her shoulder with a grimace.

**# 132. Utter the phrase “If you think having sloppy makeouts in the director’s office is a good idea, I will only laugh when Mr.Slick catches you and cuts off all your relevant parts.”**

So it turned out that had not been enough said, after all.

**# 107. ~~Deal with~~ _Survive_ Romantic EscapadesTM**

“Dirk, it’s okay to be angry at him,” Jane said wearily. “Goodness knows he’s angry at you.”

“I’m not angry at him,” Dirk said, not looking at Jane. “Because that would mean he had the power to make me angry. Which he doesn’t.”

**# 145. Restrain the desire to put one of your best friends’ heads through his quad drums**

“You know, the claptrap emotionless asshole robot nonsense you seem to insist on might be why you and Jake keep going through this utter bullshit routine,” Jane said with more sincerity than she had ever felt before in her life.

Dirk frowned slightly. “...I just. He. Eridan? How could he fucking even...” Dirk trailed off, looking - to the trained eye, of course - increasingly aghast and furious.

Jane sighed. “There we go.”

Jane could keep neither her agony nor her utter bewilderment out of her face and voice. “ _Why_?...just... _why_?”

**# 172. Ponder exactly how does one manage to fill a bass drum with cheetos and shaving cream? In fact, ponder why would one bother to fill a base drum with cheetos and shaving cream, if not to make your life hell?**

“Cronus is an asshole! He was a total jerk to Jake after he broke up with Eridan. Also, he keeps hate-flirting with Mituna, which makes Kurloz pissy because they’re diamonds-boyfriends, which makes Gamzee unhappy because they’re the troll not-siblings same Ancestor thing, and Karkat starts pale-crushing him some more-”

“-but-”

“-and then Terezi red-crushes on him and Dave is upset because he likes her and everyone gets really angry and the boat is rocked and everything sucks. Cronus totally deserved it-”

“-Jane, we really need to get on this-”

“-not now, Dirk - but how did you _even_ -”

“-and I’m not telling you how to fix it, either.”

**# 173. Figure out how to remove approximately a hundred dollars' worth of cheetos and shaving cream from a bass drum**

“Damn. It all. To _hell_ , John.”

“...I’ll grab the firehose.”

**Addendum: before the band director arrives and figures out how to remove the liver of everyone in a hundred yard radius. Simultaneously. With pure rage.**

**#174. ~~Deal with _Survive_~~ UTTERLY LOATHE Romantic Escapades(TM)**

“Alright, easy now,” Jane said far too calmly, helping one of the two tiny freshmen caught in the crossfire to sit up. Jane was unsurprised to see that the girl was faintly cross-eyed; the boy - her twin, Jane thought - was still flat on his back with wide eyes.

“Ohhh,” the girl said faintly. “My...my head hurts awfully. What happened?”

“You just got initiated,” Jane said wryly, “Welcome to marching band.”

“Th...thank you?” the girl whimpered, “Should I…?” The little cherub girl started to stand, and Jane caught her easily when she stumbled and sat down hard again. The girl sat there blinking, looking very confused in what was (to Jane, sadly enough) a very familiar way.

**# 191. Deal with an ancient marching tradition (relatively speaking) concerning a certain absent-minded and/or drug-addled trombonist and the numerous concussions that result from said tradition (though strictly speaking, the concussions are the tradition, so the point is moot)**

“Maybe you should stay sitting down for now,” Jane suggested calmly. This was a pretty usual part of the routine as well. She thought it was probably a bad thing that she had a routine for Makara-inflicted concussions.

“...I think sitting sounds nice,” the freshman - what had her name been? Callie something? - said vaguely. The poor thing proceeded to do just that, sitting there quietly with a bewildered look on her face. It was fairly lucky for Jane, actually, as right then, the other freshman caught in the backlash pushed himself up into a sitting position and let out an unholy screech, one hand clapped to his mouth. Despite the way his eyes were drifting in and out of focus, the freshman still managed to glare ferociously at Gamzee who was standing off to the side with his trombone in his hands and a slightly sheepish look on his face.

“That fucker knocked out my tooth!”

**# 237. Have yet another conversation with one Kanaya Maryam about how frightening the freshmen into respecting their uniforms by jangling her necklace made of the instrument keys of those who _didn't_ is both crass and unbecoming of a section leader of her stature**

Jane stared at the… admittedly fairly impressive “trophy necklace.”

“Is...is that a shard of percussion mallet?”

Kanaya almost purred.“Yes,” she said, grinning maniacally. “Yes, it is.”

**# 251. Remind a band director that murder is, in fact, illegal. Yes, even if you don’t get caught.**

“That,” Mr. Slick snarled, “is the most goddamn unpleasant kid I have ever fucking met, and considering how the rest of you miserable asshats try to drive me to drinking, that is fucking saying something.”

“I...have heard some very poor reports of him, yes,” Jade said cautiously, watching the (already infamous) freshman strut away. Caliborn English reminded her of nothing so much as an entitled, louder, more socially-maladjusted Karkat, but without any of Karkat’s redeeming qualities whatsoever. “However,” Jane said, eyeing where Mr. Slick was white-knuckling the handle of his third-favorite knife, “I doubt that justifies stabbing him to death. At least, I doubt the police, a judge, or a jury of your peers would believe it justifies it.” Mr. Slick bared his teeth, but released the handle of the knife anyway.

“Fucking bullshit is what it is,” he rebelliously muttered.

**# 253. Remind oneself that murder is illegal after dealing with the phenomenon of unpleasantness and dislikability known as Cal English**

“ _I_ ,” Jane hissed, “am _go_ ing to _stran_ gle _him_.”

“Please don’t,” Callie said faintly, clutching her flute to her chest.

**Addendum: not to be confused with his sister Callie English, who is, infact, a sweetheart**

“ _Give_ me _one_ goooood _reason_ ,” Jane sneered.

“Eh...” Callie trailed off. Despite being exactly identical to her brother, as all cherubs were with their egg twin, she didn’t inspire half as much rage in Jane as the smirking face of her brother. “...please?”

“I don’t know, Callie-zilla,” Latula, her section leader, said. She didn’t looked particularly horrified - mostly resigned - but was glancing at Jane with a sort of considering awe. “I’ve seen our main Jane pretty hella pissed in my time, but these are mad unreal levels of rage I’m seeing.”

**Addendum: yes, even if you don’t get caught**

“Not that I’m blaming the grrl,” Latula added as an afterthought. “That was some wicked uncool haps.”

**Addendum: and no one would particularly mind, either**

****  
  


There were so many more. The List was an endless of Jane Crocker’s misery.

_It was all worth it,_ Jane thought serenely. _For this, it was all worth it._

“So...you like it?” John said hesitantly.

Jane held up the sleekly polished, unusual conductor’s baton. It was red, had the band’s logo emblazoned on the handle and a small blue and white sphere at the base, and - most extraordinarily of all - ended not in the usual point but in a slight scoop, like a very thin spoon. The other baton, still in the case, was the same but for the end of it, which was a fork instead.

“...I,” Jane started, smiling slowly, “have never loved anything more in my life.”

The band cheered. Roxy leaped forward and gave Jane a hug, which she gratefully accepted. The moment was perfect.

And so, of course, it couldn’t last.

_BOOM._ The sound of a small explosion was muffled by several intervening walls, but to Jane’s well-trained ears, it was unmistakable. The exclamation “Mother _glubber_!”, similarly muffled followed unfortunately close on its heels. The fire alarms started up with a shrill whine; the sprinklers went on with a hiss, soaking the congregation of band kids.

Jane grimaced and felt her migraine surge. “...This had better not ruin my notebook.”

****  
  
  
**# 312. Recall to Cronus Ampora that hairspray is flammable and, consequently, it’s inadvisable to use the color guard room as a secret hiding place for lighting up**


End file.
